Innholdsfortegnelse for Jul/Aug 2015 i Fine Art Connoisseur

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770), Roman Soldier, 1720-22, brush and red chalk wash, over black chalk, on paper, 10 3/8 x 7 1/8 in., Princeton University Art Museum, Bequest of Dan Fellows Platt, Class of 1895. On view through August 24 at Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center in the exhibition 500 Years of Italian Master Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum. For details, visit museum.stanford.edu. Tiepolo ... is full of spirit ... of an infinite fire, an astonishing coloring, and an amazing speed. He paints a picture in less time than it takes another to grind his colors.— Count Carl Gustaf Tessin (1695-1770), writing to the King of Sweden, Adolf Frederick…

Whether their day was spent hunting or weaving, repitching the teepee or grooming the horse, Indians of the Montana prairie regarded evening as a time to rest, talk, and take in the sunset over a seemingly infinite expanse. “In this scene, Maynard Dixon captured the vibrant pinks, greens, and blues of that hour,” says Mike Overby, a managing partner of Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, which is featuring this gouache on paper in its July 25 sale in Reno. “This is a rare work for Dixon, who usually painted Southwestern scenes,” he adds. “He packs so much into this piece — a horse, figures, the teepee, fireweed in the grass, a lot of sky. It’s as strong an image of his as I’ve ever seen — and we’ve sold hundreds of…

Last November, the artist Gwen Marcus (b. 1955) unveiled The Tempest, an 8-foot-high bronze sculpture of a lithe man leaning into a gale. Balanced gracefully on his right foot, his muscles straining and hair streaming, this dynamic figures evokes, yet does not illustrate, Shakespeare’s play of the same title. Made using the traditional “lost wax” method, The Tempest took Marcus two and a half years to complete — a remarkable feat not only of virtuosity, but also of patience, and — because it was not commissioned — of personal commitment. This project is the latest evidence of Marcus’s longtime dedication to the human figure. The Tempest is somewhat unusual, though, as most of her sculptures depict women (both nude and draped), including a recent series of what she calls “strong,…

Last December, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas announced the launch of the French Sculpture Census (frenchsculpture.org), developed in partnership with the University of Texas at Dallas and with Paris’s Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Musée d’Orsay, Musée Rodin, and Ecole du Louvre. The Census lists French sculpture and medals dating between 1500 and 1960 that are found in American public collections, museums, public buildings, historic homes and estates (including the White House), and displayed in public spaces. Offered in both English and French, it presents in rich detail the breadth, quality, and diversity of French sculpture to be enjoyed in the United States. “French” has been defined in a very broad way: artists who were born French, artists who acquired French citizenship, and artists working mainly in France. Because…

Monotype is a method of printmaking invented by the Italian artist Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609-1664), though his contemporary Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) is also credited with its sudden popularity in the 1640s. The terms monotype and monoprint are often used interchangeably. Both involve the transfer of an inked pattern from a plate to paper, canvas, or other surface. A monotype is normally a work created just once, with no repeatable elements, while a mono-print is produced by a plate that has been indelibly altered with an image, feature, or other permanent mark. Monoprints, therefore, can be considered variations on a theme: one aspect of the design persists on the re-usable plate, and changes can be made to the resulting prints — perhaps a different color, some extra texture, etc. This…

ARTISTS & GALLERIES Taos July 4-31 Dinah Worman is the subject of a solo exhibition at Act I Gallery this summer. Based in Taos, she paints exquisite landscapes in oils, primarily set in the Southwest. INFORMATION: 218 Paseo del Pueblo Norte, Taos, NM 87571, 575.758.7831, actonegallery.com Greensboro, North Carolina July 17-August 22 Widely admired in his native China and by watercolorists around the world, Guan Weixing is best known for luminous images of Chinese village life. He has exhibited several times with Ambleside Gallery since 2005, and this summer’s show marks their latest collaboration. INFORMATION: 528 South Elm Street, Greensboro, NC 27406, 336.275.9844, amblesidearts.com London through July 24 To celebrate its 50th anniversary, Sladmore is presenting the exhibition Bugatti: Father & Son. Organized by Edward Horswell, it concentrates on Carlo…

Every summer, Kenneth Jay Lane says goodbye to one of his favorite people. But this handsome, mustached, and elaborately garbed man, a bashibazouk (mercenary fighter in 19th-century Ottoman Turkey’s army), doesn’t venture far from Lane’s opulent Park Avenue apartment, which could easily charm a sultan. “In the summers, I loan Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Bashi-Bazouk to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he takes his place next to the other great example of such fighters, another Gérôme given to the museum by Jayne Wrightsman.” There the two figures reside for the season, each wearing, ironically, the same coiled headgear and similarly enigmatic expression, until Lane returns from his summer travels. Though he made his reputation designing faux jewels worn by such glittering personalities as the Duchess of Windsor, Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Vreeland,…

Widely known on the New York art scene, Marc Mellon (b. 1951) and Babette Bloch (b. 1956) are a married couple who represent two distinct, yet equally compelling, aspects of representational sculpture today. Both were living in New York City in 1984, when they met at a Long Island foundry. Married four years later, they soon bought a house in Redding, Connecticut, where they have raised their two daughters and created art in his-and-hers studios. Wisely, Mellon never relinquished his bachelor pad, a small studio in the tower above Manhattan’s National Arts Club; now the couple uses it for small projects and as a base for their New York activities, notably the lively educational programs Bloch has helped organize at the club for more than 20 years. HUMANITY IN BRONZE…

“My fiancé has just been named professor of literature at Shanghai. I believe that within a month we will marry and leave soon thereafter for China.... This distant land seems to me to be very seductive and I’m not at all frightened.... It seems to me that I have by now skills enough to work alone for a while.” Alix Hava was 26 years old in 1920, when she wrote these words to the Symbolist painter and Nabi movement pioneer Maurice Denis, her teacher and mentor. Alix had already demonstrated her artistic prowess, working with him on the decoration of Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and joining other young artists in Denis’s Les Ateliers d’Art Sacré (Studios of Sacred Art). Now a new chapter in her life was beginning, a life…

Completely by chance, we picked the perfect moment to highlight sculpture in this summer issue. In May, Christie’s New York sold what is (as far as anyone knows) the most expensive sculpture ever. The Connecticut-based hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen paid $141.3 million for Man Pointing, a life-size bronze made in 1947 by the Swiss master Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966). This is a breathtaking price in any regard, especially when you consider that Giacometti made six casts of this subject, plus his artist’s proof. In other words, Mr. Cohen’s new possession is not unique, yet it brought a huge price not only because Giacometti is revered, but also because his best works have become blue-chip investment assets, as reliable as a vault of gold or a penthouse on Park Avenue.…

Saturdays are usually uneventful in the Tuscan village of Stazzema, which is perched atop the foothills of the Apuane Alps. But exactly one year ago — on the sunny morning of Saturday, July 12, 2014 — an unusual mix of locals and visitors from around the globe gathered there to honor a legend. The impact of “La Signorina” Nerina Simi (1890-1987) on the teaching of painting, and especially of drawing, was long appreciated by those who knew her well, yet broader recognition of her achievement was clearly overdue. Thus the Comune of Stazzema, Soroptimist International, and the Club Viareggio-Versilia joined forces to honor Simi as a great artist and beloved teacher by renaming a public square for her and inaugurating a temporary exhibition of artworks made by 34 of her…